


keep the weapons down

by themorninglark



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Slight spoilers for Free! Take Your Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 17:37:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12611840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: What he had not expected is a hand on his shoulder, his good one, a firm grip that’s sought him out like it knows exactly how to hold him, and a voice like ripening summer.“Hey,” says Natsuya.





	keep the weapons down

**Author's Note:**

> I was amply inspired after watching Free! Take Your Marks. I don't think you need to know much about the movie to read this, only that Natsuya and Sousuke ran into each other, and injury conversation happened. Title from Vienna Teng's "Antebellum".
> 
> For K. Happy SouNatsu <3

It’s Natsuya who looks for him again, because Sousuke’s not that kind of person. Natsuya, as he will learn, is. They’re at the front porch, and as the bus pulls into the driveway, Sousuke sees Natsuya’s searching gaze skim the crowd, seek him out where he’s slinging his satchel over his shoulder. It is direct and unabashed in open daylight, and so is the nod that Natsuya gives him. Sousuke, after a moment, nods back.

Rin elbows him in the side. “Your friend?”

Sousuke shrugs, looks away. “Not really.”

He thinks this is the last he will see of that boy. He doesn’t even know his name. Only that he had been honest with him, in the way one often is with strangers, and perhaps that is reason enough to hope they do not meet again, for he is none too accustomed to being so disarmed.

(Or, maybe, it is reason to hope they do.)

 

* * *

 

The next time Sousuke’s in Tokyo, Makoto asks if he will come to watch Haruka race Kirishima Ikuya.

“Well, and other people, of course,” he’s quick to add, “but it’s different when you’re up against an old friend, isn’t it?”

There’s that evergreen smile in his voice that Sousuke can hear down the line, and a crackle of anticipation in the air. It _is_ different, of course. Sousuke knows that. This isn’t the first he’s seen of Ikuya, who’s unfolded in careful ways, and swims now like the heavy cloud at his back has melted into rain; it is a different sort of grace from Haruka’s, but Sousuke’s technical eye is pleased to see that he’s put that sullen determination of his to good use.

He had expected that much, from a national-level race. What he had not expected is a hand on his shoulder, his good one, a firm grip that’s sought him out like it knows exactly how to hold him, and a voice like ripening summer.

“Hey,” says Natsuya, and then he greets Makoto with a jaunty wave.

Makoto beams. “Natsuya-senpai! I thought you might come. It’s been a long time… ah, you know Sousuke?”

 _No_ ’s starting to form on Sousuke’s lips, along with the tiniest of frowns, at the same time Natsuya shoots him a slightly raised eyebrow, says, “We’ve met.”

Something about that makes Sousuke bristle, even as he reaches for the stubborn denial himself, finds that _no_ dry as sand in his mouth. He hears Makoto ask _where_ , sees Natsuya flash him a grin and say something about a chance encounter, and what a small world it is.

It is another swimmer who comes in first, by a fingertip’s length, but Haruka touches the wall for second and Ikuya in third, with barely anything separating them. Natsuya lets out a long breath and a low whistle of admiration.

“My little brother’s catching up so fast,” he murmurs.

Makoto breaks out into one of those knowing smiles. “Ikuya’s really grown, huh?”

Sousuke, in spite of himself, can’t help turning to stare. The Kirishima brothers look nothing alike at first glance and yet now that he knows, he could kick himself for missing it. He _has_ seen those stubborn eyes before, younger, no less determined.

Natsuya glances over at him. There it is again: that sudden grin, that spark that might have once been a firework; now, in the face of years gone by and what Sousuke can summon of his own steel, it is steadier, a slow burn in an open palm.

“Hey,” says Natsuya again. “I haven’t properly introduced myself. I’m Kirishima Natsuya.”

Sousuke takes his outstretched hand. That grip on his shoulder, he finds, had been no accident.

 

* * *

 

The thing about airports is: how big they are, how the footsteps and announcements echo in the tinny air, how it feels like the whole world’s cupped lovingly within these cavernous walls with their thousand exits. It should be the easiest place to lose oneself. Sousuke _has_ lost himself in the airport, more than once. Figuratively and literally.

It is with the warring emotions of nonplussed relief and frustration that he realises he cannot get lost with Kirishima Natsuya at his side, pointing out directions to their gate and elbowing him when he’s about to wander off.

“I’m glad we happen to be on the same flight back to Tottori,” says Natsuya. He jams his hands into his pockets as they pass another vending machine, pulls out a handful of change and squints at all the options. “I get so bored on planes, you know. Coke for you?”

“I sleep on planes,” Sousuke says, brusquely.

Natsuya laughs and straightens. “Unlucky for me, I guess.”

He tosses a can at Sousuke, dead centre; it takes Sousuke a split second to raise his left hand instead of his right to catch it, and he doesn’t miss the appraisal in Natsuya’s eyes.

“Your shoulder. Is it recovering?”

Sousuke presses his lips together. His admission coils up from the pit of his belly, from a place where something’s been smouldering for years, never quite dead, no matter how much he tried to snuff it out. Natsuya’s question, offered frankly, is the flint.

“I don’t know,” he answers. This, too, is honest. “I’m seeing a new specialist now. That’s why I came to Tokyo.”

“Ah, it was the same, for Nao. He left for Tokyo, and I left for America… seems like such a long time ago now.”

 _You sound like an old man._ But the same's been said of Sousuke more than once, and so Sousuke bites back the retort, settles for echoing: "America."

The thing about airports is: how they makes every distance seem so near yet so far at the same time.

Natsuya's smile is nostalgia, on the precipice. “America. Ikuya came, too.”

Sousuke, whose own dreams had tasted, not so long ago, like a particular purgatory of flat cola and a cocktail of hospital drugs; who is only just beginning to _want_ again, thinks he might once have wanted to travel that far too, for a dream. Closing his grasp around that memory is like trying to hold on to smoke. This fire, at least, hasn’t gone out.

He clenches that fist at his right side. Natsuya’s gaze flicks downwards, back up at Sousuke, eye to eye. There is approval in it, or maybe not. There is something fiercer, and kinder than that, in the way he doesn’t press, merely hitches his bag up his shoulder, looks up at the clock and leans back against the wall, bare upper arm brushing against the sleeve of Sousuke’s light jacket. They’ve got time, here and now.

Sousuke cracks open his can of Coke and takes a long, cool drink.

 

* * *

 

It is at a _tonkatsu_ curry place somewhere in between their respective corners of the prefecture that they fall in together again, naturally; it _would_ be a place like this that, in time, Sousuke comes to think of as their usual place, irritating as the very idea of a _usual place_ is.

Natsuya does not like his curry with _tonkatsu_ , at first.

“It makes your _tonkatsu_ soggy to drown it with curry sauce, doesn’t it?” he points out, arms crossed as he eyes his plate, looks up at Sousuke with injurious travesty in his accusing gaze.

“You’re the one who likes curry,” glowers Sousuke.

Natsuya’s frown, so clearly etched on his mouth mere seconds ago, dissolves into that warm grin Sousuke’s coming to know far too well for his own liking.

“Can’t argue with that,” he says, and picks up his spoon, shovelling a small mountain of rice into his mouth all at once, to Sousuke’s bemusement.

It’s not that he’s a particularly changeable person. Quite the opposite, in fact. It doesn’t take Sousuke long at all to learn that when Natsuya’s fixated on a swimming technique, a training menu, or a movie he’s _really_ into—over whatever it is that’s on his mind in the heat of the moment—there will be no budging him. It would be aggravating if it weren’t so damned relatable.

And yet there are moments, moments like these, when Natsuya’s hotheaded nature manifests itself in surprising generosities, when Natsuya’s delight at the smallest of things like extra pickled ginger makes Sousuke smile, and then scowl to mask it, with varying degrees of success.

Once, on a day when summer rain has left them for sweeter shores and Natsuya takes a trip to Iwatobi to visit his family shrine, Sousuke meets him halfway up a hillside.

Natsuya throws himself down on a dusty slope, empties the stones from his sneakers and takes a deep breath. It is so like him, thinks Sousuke, not even to wait till they reach a pavilion or somewhere _normal_ people take a rest stop. He sits down too.

“The air smells different here,” Natsuya says.

Sousuke sniffs. “Like dirt?”

Natsuya whacks his arm with the top of his shoe before putting it back on. He laughs. When Natsuya laughs, it’s like gravel tumbling downhill, shaking loose.

“Yeah, I guess. Like dirt. I was thinking, _like home_ , but that’s kind of sentimental. Dirt is good.”

Sousuke can’t help letting out a smothered chuckle of his own. It comes out like a snort and an exhale and half-smile that makes Natsuya’s grin widen.

He doesn’t remark on the rarity of seeing Sousuke unwind, let go like this, only says, “I like this.”

It’s so unabashedly straightforward that Sousuke, who’s steeped in his fair share of bluntness himself, finds that he is at a loss for words, and it discomforts and settles him at the same time. He shifts back a little, lets his hand make landfall on the ground beside him. There are a thousand different things that Natsuya could be talking about. The view of the town sprawled beneath them. The horizon, pink with promise. The raucous cacophony of the gulls overhead. The moment, vanishing.

 _This_ is good enough, Sousuke decides, and doesn’t ask.

 

* * *

 

“You know,” Natsuya tells him, later, “you could go to America.”

It’s dark now. They’re at the station, eating takeaway bento on the platform. Natsuya’s train is another twenty minutes away. Sousuke has nothing better to do, and dinner’s on Natsuya anyway, and this ready-made _tonkatsu_ isn’t all bad.

He doesn’t say anything, at first. He looks at Natsuya’s open gaze, picks up another piece of pork with his chopsticks and spears it into his mouth.

“I know some really good doctors there.”

The clock in the rafters ticks, an echo softly filling the empty space between them and the winding track, between them and all of the time on their hands slipping away, between _them_.

Natsuya looks at him, steady. He will not apologise for pity, Sousuke knows, and it’s fine because it’s _not_ pity, it’s digging heels in in the way they both know so well, making a triumph of their sheer resolve, the dirt at their feet, no matter how far the end of the road is. _Dirt is good._ Sousuke feels like laughing again, and this, too, is victory.

 

* * *

 

He never had to tell Rin where his battle lines were: first, because he had laid them down, with a reckless cleverness, in all of Rin’s blind spots; and second, because Rin would barge right through them anyway, leave a tear-stained trail and an imprint like knuckles pressed against a stone wall.

That much, Sousuke’s used to. He’s had years to get used to. What he is unused to is the kind of belligerence that sees every hard-drawn line stark as day, comes close enough so they’re breath to breath, and if the wind changed, if the sun should rise at a different angle—

The ring of light around their shadows would breach these lines, and Sousuke would have to remake his sanctity.

He grits his teeth. He could grow used to this, too.

 

* * *

 

It is nearly autumn when they meet again, and Sousuke finds it in him to ask a question burning up the back of his throat. Morning dawns quicker on the beach. There is an impatience in the raw light, in the waves, a long-held breath in the air waiting for release.

“Kirishima—”

“Na- _tsu_ -ya,” murmurs Natsuya, hands in his pockets. Sousuke watches him slip his toes into the sand, let the water run cool and rippling across the tops of his feet.

“Did you ever think that maybe your friend wouldn’t want you to wait for him?” Sousuke asks. Pauses, plows on, relentless. “That he’d want you to move on?”

Natsuya grins. “Sure. You’re probably right.”

He turns to face the roiling tide, tips his face to the sky. It’s a lilting sky above them, these early hours painted in sailor’s-warning red, saltwater on the balmy breeze that reminds Sousuke of days past running down the docks, chasing—something.

“So I’m selfish,” Natsuya continues, blithely. “So what? Nao knows that. He’s still my best friend. He wouldn’t _be_ my best friend if he wasn’t okay with that part of me, right?”

Sousuke thinks of Rin. He had never asked Rin to be selfless. It had always been Rin who wanted Sousuke to have the world, even if Sousuke didn’t want it; _thought_ he didn’t want it. Or, perhaps, it was that he never quite felt he deserved that much.

Natsuya’s gaze flicks sideways, pins him down. There’s nothing piercing in it, nothing that will keep Sousuke there if he wishes to leave. To his dying annoyance, Sousuke finds that he does not want to leave.

“It’s okay to _want_ things, you know, Sousuke. There’s nothing wrong with being a little selfish.”

“Take me to America,” says Sousuke. “Natsuya.”

Natsuya nods.

He steps closer, wraps his arm round Sousuke’s good shoulder and pulls him in rough and tight. They stand there for a while, cheek to cheek, as the sun rises.

 

* * *

 

The thing about airports is: one’s time in them never lasts. They’re made for leaving.

As Sousuke boards another plane, drifts off into a dreamless slumber with Natsuya’s hand on the armrest next to his, the roar of the engines and Natsuya’s rock music blaring from those headphones, it is a low humming he hears above all, Natsuya’s voice singing along to whatever he’s listening to. It’s tuneless and barely keeping rhythm and it’s a good thing, thinks Sousuke, that he is capable of falling asleep in any kind of racket.

The thing about leaving is—

There’s a beginning at the other end of it, and a returning, when all is said and done. Natsuya was right: the ride is better with company, turbulence and all.


End file.
